


dacquoise

by pearypie



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, a whole lotta fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 13:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13436034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearypie/pseuds/pearypie
Summary: She holds his hand without a hint of revulsion, allowing their fingers to thread together until their palms are touching and her head rests against his shoulder. He is a servant, a freak and outsider who was pitied by the great Earl Phantomhive and she is his sun blossom fiancée who shouldn't even have spared him a passing glance.(But when she speaks to him, her voice is clear and sure and when he answers back, his gaze meeting her own, he is no longer the unwanted beast who'd been kept caged and shadowed. He is someone who wishes, with every bit of his fragmented heart, to love her as best he can.)





	dacquoise

It shouldn’t work. _They_ shouldn’t work—but they _do._ He’s a freak—a monstrosity with scales for skin, strangely slit yellow eyes, and no family to speak of. No name at all. Just a freak who was pitied by the great Earl Phantomhive and was now living in his manor with a motley crew of assassins and servants and somehow, they’d come to mean a great deal more to him than he ever expected.

Especially _her._

She is not a servant and she’s certainly not an assassin—she’s the earl’s fiancée, this golden, golden sugar sweet young lady with lily-white skin and flushed, rosy cheeks. The girl who smiled so often and so sincerely that Snake had to chide himself on his selfishness. She shared her smiles with the whole damn world and they were so beautiful and bright that he knows he should be grateful to catch even a glimpse of it every once in a while. He shouldn’t be demanding more—he doesn’t _deserve_ more—but it’s difficult to remember the reality of their situations when she bounds up the staircase, joyous and free and so wonderfully _alive._

The way she greets him with cheerful abandon and beautiful, trilling laughter; how she makes a genuine effort to differentiate between the snakes draped around his shoulders and tries her best to address each and every one. How she’s taken a liking to Emily and remembers Goethe’s fondness for apple slices; how Wordsworth asks about “dear Miss Elizabeth” every other day and Keats sometimes murmurs a few lines of poetry whenever the lady appears before them. Because even though Elizabeth Midford is the daughter of a marquess, she puts on no airs. She carries her golden roses with a warmth that betrays her blue, blue blood and she shares these aureate flowers with everyone she sees, regardless of rank or station.

She treats Snake the way she would an old friend, gifts him copies of all his favorite authors and is so very impressed by his knowledge of literary motifs that she once spent an hour by his side, talking and chatting and laughing. Snake’s cheeks were stained a permanent pink and he spoke more that one day than the whole month he’d spent learning from the earl and his butler.

But he knows the only reason he’s allowed to stay by Lady Elizabeth’s side is because he’s discreet and capable and his snakes are poisonous enough to kill anyone who might dare harm the earl’s sun-star fiancée. _Of course_ the earl wouldn’t worry about any possible affections he might have towards Lady Elizabeth because no one, least of all some _freak_ like him, would ever earn the love or even simple affection of a woman so above his station. It is a bitter, painful truth but one Snake has come to accept because just being near her fills him with a profound sense of peace—a sensation of sweet, gentle happiness that is light and tingles on the tip of his tongue.

He is so in love with his master’s bride-to-be that some days, he forgets himself and hopes a little more fervently, watches her a little more carefully, and prays to whatever god there is that the girl who insisted he call her Lizzy might one day have a smile that doesn’t have to cover the heartbreak in her eyes.

It’s a difficult thing to see, especially when she speaks and the sweet, clever humor in her words are capable of blinding even the most ardent linguist—but Snake.

The circus freak.

The unwanted monstrosity with scales for skin and strange yellow eyes—

He has known loneliness all his life and when he looks into Lady Elizabeth’s eyes, when she is quiet for brief stretches of time (a butterfly gently resting her wings), her rose blossom heart _bleeds_ and he can see the pain she has tried to desperately to hide from the rest of the world.

“I don’t like bothering Ciel with these sorts of things,” Lizzy once said after she’d cut her hand on one of the rose bushes, “burdening others with my silly little problems feels wrong. There are so many wonderful people in this world who’ve suffered a great deal more than me and I don’t think I deserve to be sad. I’m very spoiled, I know that.” She added quietly and Snake, whose heart felt ready to burst with love and that strange sort of tenderness that could only come from shared experience, moved closer, one hand daring to brush her delicate perfume scented wrist.

“You have as much right to feel sad as anyone else…says Emily.” Snake whispered gently, eyes fixed on the ground, too afraid to look up—too afraid to say anything more even though his lungs burned with so many fervid words he didn’t know how to string them into sentences.

But then he felt the brush of her shoulder, the gentle flutter of silk, and finally—miraculously—the soft, sweet warmth of her hand being pressed against his.

And in that moment, the infinite wonder of the universe compressed and bloomed, and the stardust of moon palaces and ancient myth swirled into the gentle touch of their joined hands. He felt, in those brief, few moments, the possibility of happiness.

**Author's Note:**

> \- dacquoise: a dessert cake made with layers of buttercream and hazelnut meringue - sweet and warm, just like Lizzy and Snake's love ^^
> 
> Feedback welcome :)


End file.
